analyse the first twelve books of
the "Odyssey" and count for yourselves the device by which the
poet--[Greek: polutropos] as was never his hero--evades or hurries over
each flat interval as he happens upon it.

These things, Ulysses,
The wise bards also
Behold and sing.
But O, what labour!
O Prince, what pain!

You may be thinking, Gentlemen, that I take up a disproportionate amount
of your time on such technical matters at these. But literature being an
art (forgive the reiteration!) and therefore to be practised, I want us
to be seeking all the time _how it is done_; to hunt out the principles
on which the great artists wrought; to face, to rationalise, the
difficulties by which they were confronted, and learn how they overcame
the particular obstacle. Surely even for mere criticism, apart from
practice, we shall equip ourselves better by seeking, so far as we may,
how the thing is done than by standing at gaze before this or that
masterpiece and murmuring 'Isn't that beautiful! How in the world, now...!'

I am told that these lectures are criticised as tending to make you
conceited: to encourage in you a belief that you can do things, when it
were better that you merely admired. Well I would not dishearten you by
telling to what a shred of conceit, even of hope, a man can be reduced
after twenty-odd years of the discipline. But I can, and do, affirm that
the farther you penetrate in these discoveries the more sacred the
ultimate mystery will become for you: that the better you understand the
great authors as exemplars of practice, the more certainly you will
realise what is the condescension of the gods.

Next time, then, we will attempt an enquiry into the capital difficulty
of Prose.

LECTURE V.

INTERLUDE: ON JARGON

Thursday, May 1

We parted, Gentlemen, upon a promise to discuss the capital difficulty of
Prose, as we have discussed the capital difficulty of Verse. But,
although we shall come to it, on second thoughts I ask leave to break the
order of my argument and to interpose some words upon a kind of writing
which, from a superficial likeness, commonly passes for prose in these
days, and by lazy folk is commonly written for prose, yet actually is not
prose at all; my excuse being the simple practical one that, by first
clearing this sham prose out of the way, we shall the better deal with
honest prose when we come to it. The proper difficulties of prose will
re